How to Cut a Pear Like a Pro

We’re on a campaign to give pears more love and attention. First up, teaching you how to cut one, so you’ll use this gorgeous fall fruit all the time. While we love apples, they tend to steal the spotlight every autumn. It’s time to give pears a second look. They have a slightly softer texture and sweet-tart flavor, and the humble pear is just as delicious in pies, tarts, and fruit crisps as apples. One could argue that pears have more flavor and dimension. They vary in shape, size, and color, from sweet and juicy apple-green Barlett to the crisp Bosc, with its crowd-pleasing flavor and textured skin.

You don’t see people biting straight into a pear as a snack quite like you do with apples. While you can eat the fruit that way, we often prefer to slice it or cut it into cubes, quarters, and rounds, whether snacking, using it for a dessert, or tossing it into a salad.  

How to Know When a Pear Is Ripe

Apples and pears have many similarities, but one of their main differences is that pretty much any apple you buy from the grocery store or farmers market is ripe and ready to eat. Many fruits are harvested when ripe, but not pears. They are harvested when they’re mature and ripen with time once picked from the tree. So ripeness isn’t what you’re necessarily looking for when you’re selecting pears at the supermarket. 

It’s always a good idea to choose fruits that are free of blemishes and bruises, but once they begin ripening at home, there are a few indicators that the pear is ripe and ready to eat:

1. Firm with some give: Press on the neck of the pear (near the stem) and give it a gentle squeeze. It shouldn’t be soft in the slightest. The pear should feel firm but not rock hard—it should have a little give. 
2. Fragrant aroma: Take a whiff! This can be one of the surest signs that a pear is ready to eat. If it smells like a pear, it’s go time. 
3. Changing skin color: This is especially true for green and red varieties of pears like Anjou and Bartlett, rather than Bosc pears, which are solidly brown. Other varieties have some variation in skin tone, so once you see patches becoming darker or developing freckles, this can indicate that the pear is ripe.

Tools for Cutting Pears

• Cutting board: Get your cutting board set up before you start slicing and dicing. You don’t want anything to go slipping and sliding while you’re handling a knife, so use a non-slip mat to rest your cutting board on. If you don’t have a mat, no worries. You can secure the cutting board with a few layers of dampened paper towels instead. It works just as well. 
• Sharp chef’s knife: The most important tool in your kitchen is a sharp knife. Dull or blunt knives are actually more likely to cause deeper cuts because they don’t slice as seamlessly through the food. Use a good, solid chef’s knife when cutting pears, and the fruit will be ready in a flash.

Preparing the Fruit

Before cutting a pear, you have the option to peel the fruit. After that, it’s ready to de-stem, halve, and core.

Peeling (Optional)

This step is all about your personal preference. Pear skin is full of antioxidants and fiber, but if you don’t love the texture, you can easily peel it away.

• Starting at the stem-end of the pear, hold the fruit in one hand and glide a vegetable peeler (we recommend the Y-shaped ones) down the curves of the pear to remove the skin.

Remove the Stem

This step is super easy. The stem on the top of the pear should pop out pretty easily, but sometimes you have to give it a gentle twist.

Cut in Half

Starting at the stem-end of the pear, slice lengthwise to cut the pear in half. This will properly expose the seeds and cores, rather than if you slice crosswise along the equator.

Remove the Core

There are two ways to remove the core. 

1. Use an appropriately-sized melon baller to scoop an even round from the center of each pear half. 
2. Cut each pear half in half lengthwise again, then place the pears cut-side down on the cutting board. Hold your knife at an angle and use it to shave off the seeds in the center core.

How to Cut a Pear

Whichever shape you choose, start by placing the pear halves flat on the cutting board. 

Slices

To slice the pear into long, thin pieces, use your chef’s knife to cut vertically down the length of the fruit. (Alternatively, cut crosswise to create half-moon shapes.)

Uses: Slices are ideal for snacking, they also make a sweet and fresh addition to salads.

Cubes

To cut a pear into bite-sized chunks:

1. Cut the pear lengthwise into approximately ½-inch planks.
2. Rotate the pear and slice the opposite way to create perfect little cubes.

Uses: Scatter pear cubes over salads or toss them with other fruits, such as apples, grapes, pineapple, and bananas to make fruit salad.

Quarters

Quarters or wedges of pear are easy to cut. Slice a pear in half, then slice each pear half in half again, with your knife meeting back in the center where the core used to be. If the pears are large, cut them into sixths instead of quarters.

Uses: Quarters are great for snacking, serving alongside both sweet and savory dips, or dunking into chocolate fondue.

Rounds

You can also thinly slice a pear into rounds to make fruit chips

To cut a pear into rounds, follow the first two steps when prepping the fruit (or only the second step if you want to keep the peel), then cut the whole pear crosswise around the equator into thin slices. To remove the core from each slice, use the wide end of an appropriately sized piping tip.

Uses: Pear rounds can be enjoyed raw as a snack or make a great addition to a cheese plate. They can be baked or dehydrated to make them chewy and even sweeter.